


even when we're fire

by riddledthrough



Category: A Knight's Tale (2001), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A Knight's Tale AU, Derek is Count Adhemar, M/M, Stiles is Sir Ulrich, faultless historical accuracy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-02-26 22:55:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2669447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riddledthrough/pseuds/riddledthrough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Knight's Tale AU, sort of. Stiles is a peasant masquerading as a knight -- until Sir Derek discovers his commoner birth and turns him in. Derek buys Stiles from the crown, because obviously, and hauls the stupidly proud, too-talented peasant boy off to his estate. </p><p>Derek means to teach Stiles his place, really he does. He just gets sidetracked a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it never lasts

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: occasional, (what I assume to be) period-appropriate racism, sexism, homophobia.
> 
> Title from the Lo Fang song "When We're Fire."

It was always going to come to this, Stiles knew. This: his back flayed to the bone, breeze torturing torn and mangled muscle, knees burning on the cobblestone, neck burning in the stocks. His cheekbone might be broken and his nose definitely was. Between the blood clogging his caved-in nostrils and the ridge of wood digging into his throat, he could hardly breathe.

He’d refused to think of the consequences. He was an expert at shuttering and redirecting his own thoughts -- don’t think of home, don’t think of mother, father, hunger, fear. It had been easy to bend himself into the present -- knighthood, tilting, championships. He’d thought of the next tournament and the Lady Lydia. He had not thought of the inevitable.

He hadn’t thought of it but he’d always known it would come to pass: discovery, and everything that followed -- punishment, humiliation; the loss of -- of everything, really. Pride, honour, admiration; comfort, wealth, a full stomach; freedom.

The jeers of the crowd wavered blearily in his ears. A rotted vegetable smashed against the wood near his head. The second struck him squarely, splattering through his hair and dripping into his eyes. He tried to listen to the flies buzzing around his open wounds.

If he didn’t die here, contorted in the stocks, he’d be hung to death instead.

He didn’t regret any of it.

Stiles fainted, eventually, and didn’t struggle back to consciousness until he felt a damp cloth mopping at his forehead and cheeks. He opened his eyes and twisted his neck, ignoring the agony, and glimpsed dark curls and shining eyes. Scott held the wet rag to his lips, and Stiles sucked hard to draw out a half-mouthful of water. Swallowing hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles croaked.

Scott rubbed a hand through Stiles’s hair. “You’re not,” he said. “But it’s okay.” Scott sounded so sad, and if Stiles could regret anything, it would be the miserable tremble in his best friend’s voice. Scott swiped the cloth against his face one last time and then stepped away, whispering, “The Argents are here.”

Stiles strained in the stocks, but couldn’t lift his head high enough to see past someone’s worn leather boots.

The boots took a long stride closer to him and a man’s voice, distinct over the jabbering crowd, said, “Release him.”

When the stocks were levered open, Stiles collapsed onto all fours, striving to find his balance on his knees, trying to lift his head. Crushing pain was all that kept him from fainting again: he hurt too much to think, too much to escape. But he didn’t make a sound as he lifted himself up, fists and jaw clenched against the agony.

The Argent waited patiently until Stiles could kneel mostly upright. His flayed back wouldn’t let him straighten entirely, but he squared his shaking shoulders and lifted his chin.

Sir Christopher, commander of the Knights Argent, stared down at him, stonefaced. Stiles met his eyes. Six months ago, Christopher had caught his horse’s reins as Stiles rode from a tournament arena, and congratulated Stiles on an excellent showing. Stiles had looked at the Argent crest chiselled into Christopher’s armor and understood that he was being considered for inclusion in the world’s most elite society. Six months ago. Now Christopher looked at him without approval, cold, disinterested, seeing Stiles for what he’d always been: a commoner, and therefore worthless.

The crowd was silent.

“Stiles, son of John the armourer,” said Christopher. “You are guilty of fraudulence and treachery and countless other crimes besides. You have no right to a trial before God or crown, and so have been automatically sentenced to death.”

Stiles’s eyes burned but he refused to drop his gaze.

“However,” said Christopher, and Stiles’s stomach lurched, “a member of the peerage has come forward on your behalf. The Marquess of Hale expressed a desire to purchase your bond, and the crown has granted his request.”

Dizzy and aching as he was, it took Stiles several seconds to comprehend Christopher’s words. Marquess. Purchased bond. The crown. He wasn’t going to die. He was going to live.

He would live, but he would be a servant again. A slave. The vestiges of pride and strength that had kept Stiles’s chin up and shoulders straight abruptly abandoned him, and Stiles slumped back onto his ankles.

He felt a hand close around a portion of uninjured shoulder, and let his head tip sideways against Scott’s sleeve. His body remembered a thousand such grasps over a decade and more -- touches conveying fondness, apology, camaraderie, congratulations, encouragement. Scott’s grasp returned him to himself. He lifted a hand, gripped Scott’s forearm, and together they hauled Stiles to his feet.

Stiles was barefoot, and the stone beneath his feet was cold. He stood silently, swaying. He didn’t know where to look. The sky was cloudless, too cool and vacant to comfort. And the faces in the crowd. Lines and dirt, eyes too large and too hungry. Starving for his downfall.

Finally he said, quietly, “What does my lord command of me?”

And from behind Christopher and his men Stiles heard the voice that had haunted a hundred dreams and more than a few waking nightmares. Stiles flinched so hard he nearly fell, but Scott steadied him. “Your lord commands you to clothe himself,” said Sir Derek, stepping neatly into view, “and then report to my entourage, where you will be given work befitting your station.”

Sir Derek. Marquess of _Hale_. Of course. Of course. Scott’s nails bit into Stiles’s forearm, his back was a mutilated expanse of savaged flesh, his face was broken -- but Stiles stared dumbly into Derek’s chill blue eyes and forgot his pain. His chest felt small and tight; his face was hot. Derek would kill him. Derek loathed Stiles, and Derek’s power over Stiles was now absolute. Derek would torture and humiliate him for months or years, and then he would kill him.

Derek’s lip curled, just slightly, and then his gaze slid from Stiles’s to flick over Scott. “I have no interest in extending this mercy to any of your companions. They will find no respite in my household. You will part with them at once; their fate and fortune no longer concerns you.”

Behind Derek, the crowd had grown bored and was breaking apart. Yesterday they had cheered for a young, handsome, brilliant Stiles. Today they had shouted and sneered at him. By tomorrow they would have forgotten him.

Sir Christopher was still watching him, but Sir Derek, after one last contemptuous sneer, turned on heel and strode away.

Stiles tugged free of Scott’s grip and then took Scott’s hand in both of his. They looked at each other. Scott began to cry. Stiles clasped his friend’s hand to his chest, kissed his cheek, and then released him.

“Say goodbye to Kira and Isaac for me,” Stiles whispered. Derek would never let him see any of them ever again. “I love all of you.”

He turned away. He refused to look back at Scott’s face as he heard, for the last time, that Scott loved him too.

He followed Derek.

Stiles had always known that it would end like this, eventually. But the pain was still excruciating.

\--

Walking was agony. Pain snatched away the world, leaving only a deep and brutal awareness of his own wounds.

It took Stiles several minutes to realize that he had an escort. Of course he did -- he was a criminal, newly sold into indentured servitude, and someone had to make sure he actually showed up at the Hale tents. Stiles hadn’t thought of running away until he realized that he’d be prevented from doing so. Escaping wouldn’t be all that hard, really -- but he could never live as a convict on the run, cowering and thieving. Maybe he had earned this punishment and maybe he hadn’t, but Stiles would bear each blow with dignity.

Or not. He recalled howling at the stake as they lashed open his back, sobbing against the wood post, thinking after each slice of the whip _I can’t do it, if they don’t stop I’m going to beg them to, I can only take one more_ \-- He hadn’t begged, had screamed but had never asked them to stop. But Stiles doubted that he could control himself through another whipping. How long would it take Derek to beat the final iota of strength and pride from Stiles’s brutalized body?

His escort kept pace with him, silently shadowing his shuffling gait. Stiles turned his head to look at him and then faced forward again at once.

“Did Lydia know?” the Argent asked. Not a man at all -- his escort was Lady Alison, the only female member of the Knights Argent. Yesterday Stiles would have called her a friend.

He didn’t want to talk about Lydia, but the alternative -- Alison believing that he had duped Lydia, leading her on under false pretences -- was worse. “Yes,” he said.

Alison briefly quickened her stride so that they could walk side-by-side. She didn’t look at him; they both stared straight ahead. Passersby in the streets mostly ignored him -- they were in London, where people were used to the lady knight, and no one seemed to recognize Stiles as the tournament favourite they’d hollered for yesterday.

“How’d she figure it out?”

Stiles smiled fleetingly at Alison’s implication. Alison and Lydia were old friends, and Alison was right to assume that Lydia had worked out Stiles’s identity without him volunteering the truth.

“I’ve never seen you so quiet,” said Alison, when Stiles didn’t answer. They took a left into a narrow alleyway that connected two main streets, Stiles walking more steadily now, still refusing to look at Alison.

Alison seemed indifferent to his silence. She said, “What you did is something I’ve thought a lot about. Long before today, I mean. I worked hard to become a knight -- I _still_ work hard, every day -- but it wasn’t really that _difficult_ , once I proved I had some natural skill and said I wanted to be a knight. I’m about as noble as a person can be, and people were always willing -- or required -- to do as I demanded. There are a lot of noble ladies who could become knights, if they were willing to weather a few storms. Once I realized that I started thinking about everyone else -- how easy it would be for a clever commoner to figure out the system and disguise himself as a knight. Or a minor baron. A judge.”

Stiles had heard some of the things certain knights said about Lady Alison. And he’d heard about things worse than words: dangerous pranks, vandalism and sabotage, attempted beatings and rapes that many men claimed had succeeded. He didn’t believe that her rise to knighthood had been anything but hellish. But he couldn’t focus well enough to understand whatever she was trying to tell him.

He remembered something Lydia had told him once -- _How do you think the nobles became noble? We took it, at the tip of the sword and the point of a quill._

“Your man, Scott, tried to talk to the prince about you. Determined little cur. He got an audience with Sir Christopher instead -- I was there. He explained who you really were. That is, we knew who your family was, but Scott explained how you became a knight.”

When Stiles remained quiet, Alison asked outright, “Did you kill Sir Alan of Deaton?”

Stiles looked at her finally, so startled that he nearly stopped walking. “ _No_. He took a hoof to the head.”

“That’s what Scott said. We checked the tournament results -- Sir Alan won the joust at Segovia eighteen months ago, and never entered another tournament. Census records show that his brother reported his disappearance late last year.”

Stiles turned away from her, ashamed. They could’ve used that tournament purse to transport Alan’s body home. It would’ve meant weeks on the road with a rotting corpse, and the loss of their earnings, which likely wouldn’t have been compensated. Instead they’d used the twelve gold pieces to train and outfit Stiles, disguise him as a knight, and enter him into his first tournament. “We buried him at Segovia.”

“And stole his money and horse?”

“There wasn’t anything to steal,” said Stiles, annoyed, even though Alison was being so much kinder than he’d expected. “All Sir Alan had left to his name was that horse, her tack, his armor, and a few blankets. And us -- Scott, Isaac, and me. We’d sold everything so he could enter one last tournament. And then he got killed by his own horse before he even finished the joust.”

“Oh. So it was you who rode in that tournament. As Sir Alan.”

Stiles nodded. He didn’t bother to clarify that he’d ridden in the last match only, wearing Alan’s too-large armour, half blind in an ill-fitting helmet, fumbling and afraid.

They were almost at the Knights’ Quarter, the large city square where the best knights at the tournament had been invited to pitch their tents while lesser knights were relegated to fields outside London’s walls. His own tent had almost certainly already been dismantled and cannibalized.

He hoped Scott, Isaac and Kira had been allowed to keep their gold. Or at least some of it. The horses had probably been seized -- Stiles had owned two of the best jousting horses alive. Maybe their ownership had been transferred to Derek. Maybe he’d see them again.

They entered the Knights Quarter. Stiles stiffened his postured and wished for a shirt. He felt the eyes and the delight behind them: _these_ people recognized him, even with a swollen face and a flayed back, because they’d all been beaten by him. Stiles had defeated every single knight in the Quarter -- with one exception. He’d competed against Sir Derek only once, and had lost. Derek was the only knight who’d ever bested him on horseback.

He wondered how they felt, knowing they’d spent the last fifteen months being trounced by a commoner with no formal training. A commoner who had never been unhorsed. Who had been the favourite to win the World Championships.

Stiles kept his chin up and his expression closed, and refused to look at any of them.

“Who whipped the mongrel?” someone shouted as he passed, to a rush of laughter.

“You marching him to the gallows, Sir Alison?”

“What’s wrong, peasant, why so glum?”

Yelled insults, laughter, but Alison kept her hand on her sword hilt, and no one ventured close. The knights quieted, uncertain, when they stopped at Derek’s tent.

Derek himself was absent, and his tent was tied shut, but his omnipresent shadow -- a well-built, perpetually scowling man whose name Stiles had never learned -- was waiting for them. The man smirked at Stiles but only said, “Lady Alison.”

Alison acknowledged his too-shallow bow with a disinterested “Jackson.” She pulled a rolled sheet of parchment from a tunic pocket, handed it to Jackson, and said, “That’s the official document honouring the transfer of Stiles’s bond; be sure Sir Derek gets it. And fetch a shirt -- Derek requested that Stiles be properly clothed.”

“You mean he’s going to _live_?” shouted one of Derek’s neighbors, who was standing a dozen feet away and gaping at them. Sir Ector -- Stiles had beaten him four times in the last month alone.

Alison turned to face him squarely. “Sir Derek has purchased this man’s bond from the crown,” she said, pitching her voice to carry beyond Ector. “He will serve out a fifty-year sentence of hard labour as a member of Derek’s household. He is under Derek’s power, but he is also under Derek’s protection. Surely none of you have forgotten what happened the last time someone tried to damage one of Derek’s possessions?”

Ector looked away, scowling.

Stiles knew too many stories about Derek to be sure of the exact incident to which Alison was alluding. Once, during a campaign against some northern Germanic clan, Derek had disemboweled a man, and then tried to use the man’s own entrails as rope to hang him (accounts conflicted over whether he’d succeeded). After a horse broke the leg of his favourite hound, Derek had the horse slaughtered and fed to the kennels. When he was told that it would take an hour or more to heat water for a bath, Derek had hung the messenger by the ankle from a butcher’s hook, cut the boy’s throat, drained his blood into a tub, and promptly taken a hot bath.

Stiles knew these stories were outrageous, and he would normally have dismissed them -- but he believed Derek actually _could_ have done these things. He was pretty sure Derek didn’t have a soul. He strongly suspected that Derek was either a clockwork automaton or possessed by a demon.

“I’ll get that shirt,” Jackson said, and ducked around the corner of the tent.

“Listen, Stiles,” said Alison, speaking so quietly and urgently that Stiles was startled into facing her directly. “The reason why Sir Chris hasn’t made Derek an Argent is that Derek’s broken the Code too many times. Derek has a penchant for violence, and he can be brutal. But he usually has good reason for breaking the Code -- it’s one of the reasons why he hasn’t been tried at court.” Stiles could guess the other reasons: Derek was wealthy and his family was old, and he’d successfully defended crown lands against invading armies too many times to be dishonoured without excellent justification. “Derek might hate you, but Christopher wouldn’t have let him buy your bond if he thought you’d be in real danger. Do you understand?”

Stiles nodded listlessly. If he’d had the energy he would’ve laughed in her face. Alison was delusional; Sir Christopher didn’t care if he lived out the day.

But Stiles supposed it was nice of her to try to comfort him, so he managed a half-smile. Alison smiled back, despite their hostile audience. Her eyes were brown and large and solemn; she’d have to witness a few more atrocities before the world burnt this childish earnestness out of her. He sighed as she nodded once, turned on heel and strode away.

He felt something being shoved into his hands and grasped it automatically. “Your shirt, Sir Stiles,” said Jackson, sketching a mocking half-bow as Stiles turned towards him.

The shirt had once been rough white cotton, but now was mostly yellow and brown and liberally coated with hundreds of short dark hairs. Stiles’s nose was too clogged to smell anything, but he didn’t doubt that it reeked of horse. The shirt had obviously been recently used to wipe down a sweaty horse. It was still damp.

“Thanks,” said Stiles, and began the excruciating process of trying to pull the shirt on over his head, gritting his teeth as the brutalized flesh of his back pulled, stretched, and cracked open again. He knew if he put the shirt on it would scab to his back; it would take a long soaking and the loss of a lot of skin to take it off again. But he didn’t have a choice.

_He didn’t have a choice._

Lydia had asked him, once, what he loved best about being a knight. He’d described the feeling of surging down a tournament field, his focus narrowing to his lance and his horse and the gleam of a competitor’s breastplate, even as his awareness soared up and infinite to encompass each beating heart in the crowd, the cold sun, wind tickling the flags -- “It’s like a religious experience,” he’d said to Lydia, hushed and serious, thinking of hooves pounding, voices roaring, lances shattering. She’d laughed.

Stiles had loved the joust, _loved_ it; he’d loved the sword too, and the smaller constants, like how astoundingly simple and secure life could be when you have enough gold to buy ten thousand meals and a hundred thousand glasses of mulled wine.

Most of all, though, more than the thrills or the comfort, he’d loved having choices. For eighteen lovely months, Stiles had controlled when, where, and how he’d slept, ate, traveled. Who he’d spoken to, and how. His world had been so narrow all his life, and then suddenly it had yawned huge and limitless, and Stiles had _adored_ that delicious infinity of choices. He’d dodged many of them to focus on training and winning, but the knowledge that he could quit at any time had been a freedom sweet enough to slake his thirsts and check his recklessness.

He still had choices, Stiles thought, but a choice between acquiescence and getting your ribs kicked in wasn’t truly a choice.

He struggled into the shirt, pulled it down over his hips.

Jackson laughed. “I can’t believe you didn’t ask for a clean shirt! A swank peasant knight like you. That shirt’s filthy -- your wound’s bound to rot.”

“Would you have given me a clean shirt?”

“Absolutely _not_!”

“Well, then.” Stiles tried to turn his head to look past Jackson and swayed dangerously, vision blurring and darkening at the edges. He felt sick and empty and weak. Pain was all that held him together. He was disintegrating at the seams. Stiles tried to lock his knees and stumbled into Jackson instead.

Jackson shoved him away. Stiles toppled to the ground as Jackson shouted, “ _Danny!_ ”

Jackson was a million leagues away. Stiles could hear the ocean and not much else. The high rush of waves drowned out the world.

Stiles pressed his forehead against the stone ground and tried to think. “I’m…” What was the word? It took a minute or more to draw a breath. “I’m okay.”

Someone was trying to haul him upright. They dragged at his upper arms and, when Stiles only groaned stupidly, fit an arm around his shoulder and across his back. Pain like a bolt of lightning: Stiles screamed and lost consciousness.

\--

At the end of things, Stiles dreamed of the beginning.

It started in Segovia, fifteen leagues northwest of Madrid, beside a stinking latrine ditch at the edge of a minor tournament. Their liege, Sir Alan of Deaton, sprawled against a tree, wearing only his padded jacket, breeches, and hose, his head drooping awkwardly to one side.

Scott was the kindest of them, the most empathetic, and he was Sir Alan’s favourite. It was Scott who screwed up his face against the stench, crept close and prodded Alan on the shoulder. No response. Scott said and then shouted his name. He shook Alan’s shoulder. He turned and looked at Stiles, eyes wide and frightened.

Stiles and Isaac exchanged a long look. They’d all witnessed Sir Alan’s terrible fall in the arena: tumbling backwards off his mount, his head smashing against the rail and then the ground, and then, finally and worst of all, his frightened horse wheeling around and bringing her forehoof down hard into Alan’s helmeted forehead. Scott and Isaac had rushed to his side while Stiles caught and calmed the horse, and together they’d moved Alan off the field.

They’d removed Alan’s dented helmet but not the blood-slicked mail coif he wore underneath. Now, at Isaac’s grim nod, Stiles stepped forward and peeled it carefully off of Alan’s unresisting head. The three of them stared down at the deep rupture in Alan’s bald skull. At the greyish-pink matter oozing from the wound.

Isaac uttered a quiet, strangled noise, spun away, and threw up into the grass. Numbly Stiles went to his side and rubbed his back, staring down at the small pile of sick. All Isaac had to vomit up was water and acid. None of them had eaten in four days.

Scott said, “He’s still alive.”

They were starving, and their liege lord would be dead within the hour. Alan didn’t have a single copper penny to his name. He’d borrowed the entrance fee to the Segovia tournament, and for a while, until he was unhorsed, it looked like he’d regained his old verve in the arena and they’d all have food and purpose again. Now this. Scott and Stiles were seventeen, Isaac was nineteen -- they were too old to sell themselves into apprenticeships. Other knights had pages and squires of minor nobility; none of them would be interested in three wretched peasants. Stiles thought wildly of soldiering -- he was handy with a sword --

“I’ll ride in his place,” Stiles said.

For a moment he felt like one of the overwrought characters in shoddy fairground performances, whose hands fly to their mouths after they say something they hadn’t quite meant to voice. But --

But he _could_ do it.

Isaac straightened to stare at him. “What?”

“I could finish the tournament,” Stiles said, speaking fast. “I could put on his armor and ride in his stead. I’d keep my helmet down. He was doing so well -- all I’d have to do is stay in the saddle, and I’d win the joust. I could do that. I could stay in the saddle. I’ve tilted against Sir Alan a million times --”

“You’ll be caught and hanged,” said Isaac.

“I’ll keep my helmet down.” He looked at Scott, still frozen near Alan’s prone form, still wide-eyed. “We don’t have any money. We don’t have any food. Sir Alan is dead, and we’re going to starve if we don’t do something. And I can do this.”

“Stiles --”

“All he needs to do is ride through one tilt,” Scott said quietly. “Just one tilt. We could get away with it.”

“And if we _don’t_?” said Isaac.

Stiles said, “Then it’s on me. I’ll say you had no idea. I’ll take the blame.”

They were silent. Occasionally Stiles knew when to shut up, and for once he did so, biting his lip as he waited for them to decide. Isaac stared past him at Alan’s limp body.

Just as Stiles decided he couldn’t keep quiet for another instant, Isaac sighed and said, “I’ll saddle the horse.”

Scott hefted Alan’s breastplate. “And I’ll help you suit up.”

\--

Stiles dreamed of the present and the past and muddled them together. His back was ablaze. He was so hungry that he saw spots if he stood too quickly. Cold water dripped across the back of his neck, and Stiles gazed at a handful of gold and began to believe that he could change everything.

Stiles had never worn armor before that afternoon in Segovia. When he’d tilted against Alan, he’d worn a practice suit of boiled leather, with stout boards fitted across his chest to absorb direct impacts. Even as Alan’s eyes had begun to fail, his reflexes had remained true, and neither had ever feared that Stiles would take a lance through a head.

But now he was mounted on Hela, Alan’s giant mare, dressed in full armor. It was heavier and hotter than he’d expected. Once, as an eight-year-old whelp freshly given into Alan’s service, he’d donned Alan’s helmet and tried to glimpse his reflection in a horse trough. Isaac had caught him almost at once and given him such a severe lecture that Stiles had never built up the nerve for a second attempt at playing knight.

This wasn’t play. This was _real_ , and Stiles’s hands were sweating inside his gauntlets, and he couldn’t seem to take a full breath. He had to force himself not to grip the horse too tightly with his legs.

Alan was stouter than Stiles, and the armor was loose everywhere. Several pieces had to be tightened or secured with sliced-up scraps of cloth. The helmet, which was meant to be worn over a metal coif, only stayed mostly in place because the dent had narrowed it. Still, the helmet slid forward or backwards if Stiles jerked his head to quickly. He could barely see.

Neither Scott nor Isaac spoke to him as they walked beside his horse towards the main tournament field. Scott led Hela, petting her muzzle every few feet. Isaac carried their last two lances against each shoulder.

A tournament official met them at the edge of the field and verbally confirmed his identity as Sir Alan of Deaton. Stiles nodded at him, and waited for him to turn away before he readjusted his helmet. Words churned at the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t think of how to say them, and anyways he probably wouldn’t be understood from behind the oversized helmet.

They watched two knights thunder along the rail towards each other, lances levelled. The larger knight’s horse was clearly frightened, half-skittering every few steps even at high speed, but his rider kept the reins loose and his weight settled forward in the saddle. Stiles knew what would happen. In the instant before the knights should’ve struck each other, the horse twisted his blinkered head, saw the lance or at least the other stallion, and leapt sideways. His rider’s lance went wide; the other knight struck an arm just below the shoulder. Stiles patted Hela. She was the veteran of a thousand jousts, and even if Stiles wasn’t a good horseman -- which he was -- she would never behave so poorly.

The larger knight got his horse under control with the aid of a pair of a squires and then signalled his withdrawal. He was wealthy enough for excellent armor, even if he was a shit rider; his shoulder might be dislocated, but his arm likely wasn’t broken. He rode off the field, presumably in the direction of a surgeon, while the other knight raised a fist in acknowledgment of the crowd’s polite applause.

Stiles watched the victor’s helmet turn towards him. Whichever one of them won the next tilt would win the tournament joust.

“You’re on,” said Isaac, and lifted a lance for Stiles to take.

“Good luck,” said Scott. He slapped Hela’s rump as Stiles nudged her into a trot.

The other knight was Sir Richard Loring, and this was only the second tournament Stiles had ever seen him at. He was young, perhaps fifteen, and his technique was solid but hardly faultless. He took a long time to lock and steady his aim. Stiles would use that.

Sir Richard took his time arranging himself at his end of the arena, dismounting while a page checked his mount’s hooves, taking a long drink of water or maybe mead. Stiles balanced the butt of his lance against his thigh while he waited for Richard to readjust a buckle, chat with another knight, remount, trot his horse in a wide circle, and finally take his place a hundred yards down the rail.

Richard lowered his visor and lifted his lance. Stiles returned the salute. Beneath him, Hela slowly rolled her weight onto her hind legs and snorted out a loud, hot breath. He stared down the field at Richard, perfectly framed between Hela’s pricked ears.

A page trotted out onto the middle of the field, holding a white flag aloft. Hela trembled. Stiles tightened his left fist around her reins.

The flag swept down, and Hela launched herself forward.

For an instant, as he leaned into Hela’s ferocious gallop, Stiles forgot the competition. He felt limitless, invincible. _Powerful_. Stiles had never felt powerful before, not for a single moment of his life that he could remember -- but here, on this tramped field in Segovia in front of a scant two hundred spectators, astride an aging mare, wearing a dead knight’s armor with a poorly weighted lance in his right hand… The wind whistled through the narrow slit in his visor, Hela’s hoofbeats rattled his bones, a trained knight was levelling twelve feet of sharpened wood at his chest, and Stiles was soaring a thousand miles above it all, mighty and free.

Stiles lowered his lance.

\--

“What is going on here?”

The voice snapped through the haze of memories and jolted Stiles most of the way back to the present. He was shirtless again, lying on his stomach, his uninjured cheek pillowed on rough fabric. Sharp voice. Loud. Deep. Stiles struggled to lift his head.

“He passed out,” someone said, answering the first voice. They were discussing him. “We had to clean his wounds -- unless you’d rather that mess goes bad and kills him. No, don’t touch him!”

Stiles tried to speak and whimpered instead. His eyes were crusted shut.

“What’s in his hair?” the first person asked.

“Rotten apple, I think. Hard to tell. I was going to wash that, too, after I set his nose. But he’ll have to sit up for that.”

“His nose?”

“It’s broken. Freshly broken, though, so a good tug or two now should let it heal alright.”

“Let it heal crooked,” the first voice said, and Stiles finally recognized him: Sir Derek.

“I like crooked noses,” Stiles slurred. “They’re adorable.”

Silence.

“Did you give him something for the pain?” asked Derek.

“No,” said the second person. “He’s just a bit out of it, I think.”

“How long is he going to be like this?”

“Out of it? Or too wounded to move much?”

“Wounded.”

“A couple days at least. He was flayed to the bone in a couple spots -- see there, and there.”

“If he can’t even move now, how’d he walk all the way here?”

The second voice was oddly gentle as he said, “He was a knight, Derek, and he won forty-three tournaments in fifteen months. He’s taken a lot of lances. I imagine he’s pretty good at carrying on through tremendous pain.”

Derek snorted. Stiles finally managed to open his eyes. He was lying on a table in a dimly lit room; Sir Derek and a man he vaguely recognized were standing over him, at a funny angle to his vision. Derek’s powerful arms were folded across his chest.

“I’m actually really bad with pain,” Stiles said, even as his brain struggled to restore his verbal filters. “I’m a huge baby. Or a girl. Not like a Lady Alison kind of girl. More like a....” He couldn’t think of anyone. He hadn’t known many girls, and no one could claim that Lydia was soft. Finally, triumphantly, “Like Sir Ector. Like a giant fat man-baby. Crying beside my horse.” His laugh broke immediately into a cough that made his back spasm. “That’s, um. Yeah. That’s what pain does to me.”

“Christ,” said Derek, disgusted. “Can you shut him up?”

“About the most I can do is ply him with scotch and rum.”

“Mmmm,” said Stiles. He slid his left arm up until his forearm was near his head, then tried to lever himself up onto all fours. He only managed to lift himself a few inches before he collapsed. Stiles felt drunk already, dizzy and disoriented and too careless to watch his mouth. “I’m stupid when I drink.”

“He hasn’t really shut up since he fainted on Jackson,” said Derek’s companion. “Kept mumbling about how he was going to ask for Lady Lydia’s hand after he won the World Championships.”

Derek laughed.

“I could’ve done it,” whispered Stiles, as his eyes fluttered shut of their own volition. “I think I could’ve done it all. For a while longer.”

“Poor thing,” said Derek, without sympathy. “Please get him off my dining table, Danny. Stash him over in that corner. The dogs can keep his fever down.”

“And the scotch and rum?”

A brief pause, then: “Dulling the pain won’t help him heal. Let’s not waste the liquor.”

Danny’s sigh was on the fond side of exasperated. “If you say so. Hey, before you go -- congratulations on today. Jackson said you were magnificent, and you know he doesn’t give false praise.”

“Well. There wasn’t exactly a lot of competition.”

“You’re going to win this. Derek, you’re going to be World Champion.”

“World Champion,” Stiles mumbled, nuzzling his cheek against the wood.

“I don’t care about being World Champion,” said Derek.

“I know,” said Danny. “I know. But still. It’s an enormous accomplishment --”

“I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Danny. Make sure the idiot peasant doesn’t die.”

“Idiot peasant,” said Stiles. He liked Sir Derek’s voice -- it was everything else about Derek, including the words he spoke with that voice, that Stiles detested.

A wet cloth pressed against his head, rubbed through his hair. Danny murmured to him, but Stiles was too tired and sore to catch the words.

\--

Stiles’s sleep was fitful. Pain crackled through his restless doze, spearing him awake at irregular hours. His hips, chest, and chin were sore from lying belly-down on the table, his cheek ached where he’d been struck, his nose throbbed. His entire back was relentlessly, unceasingly excruciating.

His mind was clearer in the hushed dark tent. He watched the pile of hounds beside the door, where Derek had wanted him moved; he tried to smile when their paws and tails twitched in their sleep. He thought about Lady Lydia and Scott, Isaac and Kira, cheering crowds and deferential innkeepers. Stiles wondered, for the hundredth time that day, if his friends had managed to hold onto any of their gold.

Where were Derek and his men? A knight’s entourage often slept in a smaller secondary tent, but space was limited in the Knights’ Quarter, and the extravagant pile of blankets and cushions in one shadowed corner was empty. Perhaps they were all staying at an inn. Maybe -- Stiles remembered bits of Derek and Danny’s conversation -- Stiles had talked so much he’d driven them away. Except he doubted that Derek would leave the tent to a delusional peasant when he could just have Stiles ejected into the street instead.

A dog snuffled. A drunk shouted outside. Noises of revelry and debauchery drifted through the cloth walls from neighboring tents. Stiles didn’t think he could lay on a rough wooden slab for one second longer.

Slowly, gingerly, striving not to jar his back, Stiles levered himself up onto his forearms and then onto his hands and knees. Kneeling hurt -- his knees were bruised from his hours in the stocks -- but so did breathing and blinking and most other attempts at movement.

He shuffled to the edge of the table. Swung his legs over the side. Eased himself onto his feet. He kept a hand on the table, but he’d regained some of his strength and his legs were steadier than he’d expected. He had a hazy memory of being spoon-fed some sort of sloppy grain-and-milk gruel while half asleep.

The knights partying in the square were really quite boisterous. Shouts, laughter. Stiles had attended many banquets and a few feasts, but he’d never joined these sorts of celebrations. Too raucous, and too thoroughly drenched in words and rituals that Stiles struggled to imitate and failed entirely to understand. What time was it?

Where was Scott? Was he still with Isaac and Kira? He missed the three of them like limbs. They had lived on top of each other for so long. Had been each others’ constant and loyal companions. He and Scott had spent only a few days apart since they were eight years old. Stiles hadn’t been the oldest, but he’d been the boldest. He’d been responsible for them.

And he had failed them.

The noise outside was swelling. Stiles glanced toward the entry flap. It was tied shut. He flexed his toes against the cold stone ground.

“You’re _sure_ Derek’s not in there?” he heard someone shout outside.

Stiles tensed and stepped away from the table. Why hadn’t he considered this likelihood? Why did he never think of anything?

“Derek’s up at the castle,” someone answered. “Diddling one of the squires, probably.”

“Diddling a squire -- or letting a squire diddle him?”

Tensing his muscles reminded Stiles that substantial portions of some muscles had recently been gouged from his body. If these men were after him, Stiles wouldn’t last three seconds.

He stared around the tent. Dark, with only the barest whispers of street lamplight drifting through gaps in the tent fabric.

“Can’t believe they’re letting him live.” This voice was hardly raised -- they were close.

“How much do you think that horseshit with the bond transfer cost Derek?”

He could hide under the table. Or he could shout for help.

He’d rather take the beating -- he’d rather let them slaughter him -- than cower or holler.

Didn’t Derek keep any weapons in his tent? He must -- unless he’d stashed them somewhere the peasant criminal couldn’t snitch them.

Stiles had kept his sword and dagger near his bed. Paranoia, Scott had claimed; preparedness, Stiles had insisted. On tiptoes, knees bent, Stiles slipped towards Derek’s bedding. A thick belt bearing three scabbards hung from one post, and Stiles’s idiot brain registered how many worn holes were pierced through the leather -- Derek, or someone else who’d owned the belt, had once been much smaller.

All three scabbards were empty.

The crowd’s words were indistinct even to Stiles’s hypercharged mind, but they were close -- right outside the tent.

Stiles estimated that he’d be able to manage bending over only once, so he kicked at Derek’s blankets rather than lifting them. The sword and knives couldn’t be far. Derek couldn’t possibly be wandering the city with an armful of unsheathed blades.

His toe struck something hard, and Stiles dropped immediately into a crouch, fumbling at the cloth-wrapped shape. A sword. A great double-edged broadsword. Before Stiles had quit swordfighting to concentrate on winning jousts, he’d been a master of this weapon.

The blade’s needle-sharp tip chipped a flagstone as Stiles used the sword like a walking stick to haul himself upright. He leaned on the hilt, struggling to control his breathing, and turned to face the tent. Something silver flashed through the cloth. Someone was sawing open the flap.

The broadsword was nearly five feet tall and terrifically heavy. It was meant to be wielded with both hands, but two days ago Stiles had been able to maneuver it one-handed. Now, even with adrenaline singing in his veins, just the thought of hefting the sword exhausted him.

One of the strangest things about knights, Stiles had come to realize, was how obsessed they were with appearances. How easily cowed they were by the mere trappings of wealth or strength. Once he’d established a reputation in the arena, opponents’ fear had done more to unhorse his competitors than any finesse of technique ever could. If Stiles could make them think he was strong and able -- not sick and trembling and scared --

“Have you forgotten who I am?” Stiles shouted. The knife withdrew from sight, and Stiles grinned, careless of his swollen cheek. His voice was hoarse from babbling and screaming. He thought he sounded menacing. “You think because you stopped calling me a knight I can’t still use this sword?”

A beat of silence. Then: “You think he actually has a sword?”

An answering scuffle, punctuated by “Shut _up_.”

“He doesn’t have a sword. Derek wouldn’t leave him one.”

Stiles lifted and dropped the sword’s tip a few times. The sound of iron against stone was unmistakable.

The silence lasted a moment longer this time.

“There’s ten of us and one of him,” someone whispered, not so quietly that Stiles couldn’t hear.

“Did you see him win the mêlée at Lisbon six months ago? If he’s armed --”

Stiles laughed, loudly. “I can hear you. Why don’t you come on in where I can see your faces?”

Stiles tensed, unsure if he’d goaded them too far. He was walking a slender line between conveying fearlessness and ignorance of their identities. A knight’s honour was more precious to him than any title or child. He had won the Lisbon mêlée easily, eight knights united against him but still too slow, too graceless, to procure his defeat. He’d been wearing armour, though, and hadn’t been beaten senseless beforehand. He wouldn’t survive if he provoked them to attack.

“We watched him faint eight hours ago,” someone said. Stiles thought it was Sir Ector. “Men, are you truly willing to let this bastard’s mockery stand? He’s a _peasant_ , a _commoner_ , and he _dared_ to enter _our tournaments_ \--” The voice rose hysterically, then cut off abruptly at its most entertainingly high-pitched.

Stiles, disturbed by the sudden silence outside, gripped Derek’s sword in both fists. He, like the knights gathered outside, strained to hear the distinct noise of shodden hooves clopping against stone.

“Is that the palace guard?”

“Shit, _shit_ , is that Sir Derek --”

“That’s not Derek --”

Two short blasts of a trumpet split the night, followed by a woman’s voice, as cold and clear as a shaded brook. “Sir Mark, Sir Ector, Sir Robert -- would one of you care to explain what you’re doing at Sir Derek’s tent?”

Stiles almost laughed, even as he felt a burning flush creep up his neck and suffuse his face.

“Lady Lydia. We heard noises inside the tent and assumed that the peasant was trying to escape --”

“Is that the truth?”

Stiles crept to the tent flap, cradling the sword awkwardly in one hand and against one forearm, unwilling to put it aside.

When no one answered her, Lydia commanded Sir Ector to open the tent. “It’s nearly sliced open already, lads, one last good swipe should do the trick.”

Stiles _loved_ Lydia. No one spoke, but the knife reappeared and a moment later the rope parted. Stiles slipped through the flap and stood in the entryway, smiling up at Lydia, flawlessly attired despite the late hour, mounted on her little roan mare, straight-backed and stern-faced. She was flanked by six mounted men. The five knights between them, unwilling to look at either Stiles or Lydia, stood stiffly and stared mostly at each other.

“Hullo, Stiles,” said Lydia, smiling at him.

It was Lydia who had sent word to Stiles warning him that Sir Derek had followed Stiles to his childhood home in London’s poorest district. Derek had reported him to the crown representatives on the tournament board, and Lydia’s message had come five minutes in advance of the dozen armed guards with an arrest warrant. Lydia had given Stiles sufficient time to mount a horse and flee. Stiles had chosen to sacrifice his freedom in exchange for his honour.

Stiles had thought that Lydia’s warning was a courtesy only -- one final acknowledgment of a relationship that died the instant Stiles was discovered. Why was she here, now, publicly coming to a peasant’s aid, lowering herself to rescue a criminal from her own peers?

Trying not to wince, Stiles dropped the broadsword’s point to the ground and leaned heavily on the hilt to sketch a half-bow, bending his knee to compensate for his back’s painful unwillingness to curve. “My lady.”

“Good Sirs,” said Lydia to the knights, “I and Sir Derek both thank you for your service this evening. It takes a rare and noble heart to come to the rescue of a humbled man who has defeated you a dozen times or more. Your duty is now fulfilled. Go with grace.”

Stiles watched the knights’ tight, furious expressions as they dropped stiff bows and turned to slink off towards their tents. There’d been more than five men a few minutes ago; their companions must’ve scurried off at the first sound of hoofbeats.

Lydia appraised him as Stiles leaned the sword against a tent post and took two steps closer to her, halting several feet away.

“You too, lads,” Lydia told her men, once the square was cleared and all the surrounding tents securely shut.

Her men exchanged glances, then tugged their horses around and walked them slowly away, clearly unwilling to leave their mistress. One rider stayed at her side until Lydia faced him directly and said, “You, too, Jackson.”

Stiles squinted, startled, and realized that Lydia’s sixth companion was indeed Jackson, wearing a brocade tunic over casual cotton trousers. No shoes. Had Jackson heard the knights plotting and gone to fetch Lydia? If so, why Lydia and not Derek, or an Argent, or a city guard?

“My lady, he’s a dangerous criminal --”

“Jackson.” Lydia waited for Jackson to meet her eyes. “I daresay my knowledge of Stiles is a good deal vaster than yours. Now go.”

Stiles could almost _hear_ Jackson’s eyes roll, but he only huffed -- loudly -- and swung down from his horse. Stiles didn’t return Jackson’s acid glare as the other man led his horse past him and behind Derek’s tent.

Stiles waited until he could no longer hear Jackson’s muttered ranting before stepping forward. He cupped his hand beneath the roan’s muzzle and smiled as she dropped her nose to snuffle at his palm. He caught her reins in his other hand and nudged her head up so that he could blow gently into her nostrils. Her name was Prada, and she already knew him, knew his scent; she answered him by butting her head against his chest.

Quiet and elegant as a cat, Lydia slid from her side-saddle seat and moved to stand beside him. For a minute they stood silently, petting her horse together.

“She’s going to miss you, I think,” said Lydia.

“Mmm.” Stiles let his fingers brush against hers over the velvet warmth of Prada’s nose. “Thank you, Lydia. For the warning. And for tonight.”

“You’re welcome, Stiles.” Lydia was watching him, but Stiles couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. “Tell me: is it easier for you to swallow your pride as a peasant?”

He couldn’t quite contain his flinch.

Lydia’s hand closed around his wrist. “Stiles. Look at me, please.”

He turned his head. She’d seemed so pure and fragile when first he’d seen her, draped in yards of pink silk and white lace, twirling a parasol over one shoulder. But Lydia’s core was steel; she wore clothes like armour, and her tongue was sharper and deadlier than any sword. He was prouder of earning her respect and fondness than he was of anything he’d accomplished in the last year and a half.

Her eyes were huge and grey and so lovely to him. Lydia saw, and understood, far too much.

“I’m sorry I disgraced you,” he said.

She huffed a chuckle and adjusted her grip until she was holding his hand. “I’m sang neuf -- my position at court is guaranteed by my riches, not my connections and centuries-old contracts. If anything, you’ve boosted my station. You’re fabulously delicious gossip at court right now.”

He smiled.

“You’re awfully quiet,” whispered Lydia, squeezing his hand.

“I keep thinking that I wish I were dead,” said Stiles. The words rushed up and out now that he’d begun speaking, while the hand Lydia wasn’t holding twisted and flexed around Prada’s reins. “Another week in London, at least, until Derek wins the Worlds, while people watch me and think of ways to beat and murder me. And once the tournament finishes, and Derek can turn his full attention to me --? He _hates_ me, he ruined me just to buy me as a slave. He’ll destroy me. I’ll never see my father again, or Scott, or you --”

He bit his lip savagely, drawing blood, and turned his face away from the unbearable sympathy in Lydia’s expression. She wouldn’t let him tug his hand away. Prada whickered softly at his distress, nudging his shoulder, dumb eyes dark and liquid.

“I have a purse filled with gold,” said Lydia. “You can take Prada and ride away. Grow a beard. Leave England. Go south or east. I can send word to Scott and the others, and maybe they could find you. You’d be free, Stiles.”

“I can’t even grow a beard,” he said, attempting a laugh.

“ _Why?_ ” Lydia’s grip turned bruising, and she tugged sharply at his arm, forcing him to turn and look at her. “For God’s sake, Stiles, _why_? You’re not gaining anything by staying. You could flee now, you could save yourself and your stupid pride --”

“I wouldn’t. I’d lose my pride, Lydia; I’d dishonour myself. Honour is all a man has. I couldn’t bear --” His voice broke and he ground his teeth together, trying to suppress his tears. She was right: he wasn’t gaining anything by staying -- but at least he wasn’t losing everything he had left. “You nobles think that you’re the only ones who can care about a slap or an insult, that because us peasants bear a hundred slights every day of our lives we stop feeling them, that -- that we’re too stupid and _common_ to want respect or, or dignity -- Lydia -- I --”

He was crying openly, trying to give voice to a lifetime of shame and rage. If all he had left was empty pretence, if the only thing they could admire in him was dumb animal courage, he’d cling to it until his dying breath. A true knight wouldn’t flee. Stiles would stand fast and bear every punishment they dealt.

“Oh, Stiles,” Lydia whispered, and drew him into her arms, encircling his hips to avoid his flayed back. Stiles dropped Prada’s reigns to hold her tight, pressing his uninjured cheek into her hair and trying not to shake too badly. “I didn’t even bring a purse,” she said into his bare chest. “I knew you wouldn’t agree to leave. You’re so foolish, Stiles, and so brave. So brave. You’re the best man I know.”

They held each other for a long time, Stiles crying into her soft strawberry-blonde hair, Lydia murmuring to him. Dimly Stiles was aware that some of the knights in the Quarter were doubtlessly peeking at them from their tents, that it was wildly inappropriate and potentially dangerous for Lydia to be seen in his arms. But this was the last thing he’d be able to have just for himself for a long, long time. Possibly ever. He savoured the faint whiffs of her flowery perfume, indistinct through his blocked nose, and the sensation of her strong, slender body pressed close to his.

Not until he released her did Lydia loosen her grip and take a half-step back. She turned her face up to his. Stiles grasped her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

She caught and held his hand as he stepped back. “Derek --” she said, then stopped, unusually hesitant. “I used to be good friends with his younger sister. I never knew Derek very well, but Cora thought the world of her older brother, and she was neither stupid nor unprincipled. That kind of regard means something, I think. Perhaps you have less to fear from Derek than you think.”

Her words were like a static shock to his heart. Stiles had been dreading Derek’s cruelty, but he hadn’t realized until Lydia spoke that he feared Derek himself. He’d forgotten, somehow, what it felt like to be at a noble’s mercy -- the smallness of being the forgettable subject of their brutality.

“I’ll be okay,” he told her, squeezing her palm.

Lydia shook her head at him, fond and rueful, before drawing his hand to her mouth and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “Go with my love, Stiles,” she said. She released him, stepped away, and then climbed nimbly into Prada’s saddle. “We’ll see each other again.”

He nodded, not believing her. She smiled, the faint, mysterious, close-mouthed smile that he loved best, then turned Prada. Stiles watched her ride away until she disappeared down a side street.

When he reentered the tent, Jackson was lurking in the darkest corner, sitting cross-legged on a blanket and polishing a dagger by the light of a single candle. He’d probably heard everything Stiles and Lydia had said. He’d probably heard Stiles cry. For once Stiles was too exhausted to care.

“You’ll want to put Sir Derek’s sword away,” said Jackson, without looking up. “He’ll have your hands if he finds out you were handling his weapons.”

Wordlessly, Stiles hefted the broadsword and carried it back to Derek’s bedding, rewrapping it as nicely as he could and then stashing it under one of Derek’s quilts. He couldn’t recall exactly how he’d found the sword, and knew Derek would likely recognize any differences. There wasn’t much he could do about it, though, except get some rest and try to gather his strength to withstand a fresh beating.

Derek’s empty pile of bedding looked like the most comfortable thing in the world -- heaps of cushions and half a dozen blankets atop silk sheets and a thick feather mattress. Soft and warm, all in the rich Hale colours of black and pale blue. Stiles would’ve given another six hours in the stocks to sink down and burrow into that bed. Instead he turned and trudged away.

He paused after a few steps and turned grudgingly towards Jackson, who was still intent on his dagger as if it were the only thing of note in the tent. He cleared his throat and received no response. “Uh,” said Stiles, to the top of Jackson’s head, “about leaving to find Lydia -- that was, um. Really...good of you. Um. Thank you.”

Jackson’s face, when he finally looked up, brimmed with scornful amusement. “I didn’t do it for you.”

“Right, yeah,” said Stiles. “Of course. Still.”

Jackson stared at him, eyebrows raised, until Stiles shifted awkwardly away.

Stiles wasn’t sure if he’d be able to sleep with Jackson skulking nearby. But the dogs were warm and friendly, sleepily shifting out of his way; one bitch licked briefly at his hand. Stiles laid down on his stomach, hissing at the cold stone, and they pressed in close around him, warming him. He fell asleep within moments.

 

* * *

 

 

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	2. can you believe it

Stiles awoke to something hard digging into his hip, nudging him insistently. He swatted blindly at the intrusion, then stiffened, groaning, as the movement reminded him of his myriad injuries. He opened his eyes. Derek was shoving at him with the toe of his boot.

“Fuck me,” said Stiles. He hauled himself up to sit on his bum before adding, very belatedly, “Sir Derek.”

Sir Derek was staring down at him, arms crossed, a day’s growth of stubble darkening his jaw. He was fully dressed in black trousers, tall boots, and a black tunic trimmed with powder blue. The hounds that had befriended Stiles so readily during the night had betrayed him to mill happily around Derek, panting up at him. Derek unfolded his arms and patted the dog leaning against his thigh without taking his eyes off Stiles.

“Care to tell me why my tent was sliced open during the night?”

“Um,” said Stiles. His mouth was dry and he ached all over and the daylight filtering through the tent was too bright, the noise from the square too loud. “Is Jackson around?”

“Jackson indicated that I should speak with _you_.”

“Oh. Um. A few knights maybe wanted to have a chat with me during the night?”

One of Derek’s eyebrows arched upward toward the loose waves of his untidy dark hair. “You don’t look like you had any chats last night.”

“We kept it strictly friendly. I brandished your sword at them for a bit, and they ran off with their tails between their legs.”

Derek’s gaze flickered away, towards his bed and the wrapped broadsword stashed under the blankets, before returning to Stiles. “You took my sword.”

“Well,” said Stiles, feeling strangely incapable of looking away from Derek’s pale eyes. “Yes?”

“And all it took to scare off a mob of armed knights was the sight of a half-naked peasant with a sword in his hand.”

A hot, sick wave surged up from Stiles’s stomach to flush his cheeks. Coldly he said, “Perhaps my reputation preceded me.”

Derek narrowed his eyes. “Touch any of my weapons again,” he said slowly, “and it’ll be the last thing you ever touch. Understood?”

Inhale, exhale. Inhale. “Understood, Sir Derek.”

Derek watched him in silence for a moment, then nodded once, curtly. “Good. And if you’re recovered enough for nighttime swordplay, you’re well enough to start working. Danny lost half of yesterday to nursing you, so you’re to shadow him today and do everything he tells you to. Understood?”

Slow inhale. Stiles couldn’t lift his gaze any higher than Derek’s obscenely muscular forearms. “Understood.”

“Understood…?”

Stiles snapped his eyes up to Derek’s. Clenched his fists. Tried to control himself. “Understood, Sir Derek.”

“Much better.” Half-smiling, Derek appraised him for another long moment, then turned away and strode out of the tent.

Stiles wrapped his arms around the closest hound and pressed his hot face into her fur. “Fucker,” he whispered into her ear. She wagged her tail and tried to lick his cheek. “You’re too sweet to me,” he told her, releasing her in favour of rubbing vigorously behind both of her ears at once, smiling as her hind leg began twitching with spastic pleasure. “I’m going to get whiplash, dodging from your master’s blows to your hot little tongue. Yeah, you like that, don’t you? Give me some of that nasty loving -- ew, okay, get your tongue out of my mouth, you filthy beast.”

“Should I leave you two alone for a minute?”

Blushing, Stiles jerked his head up to meet Danny’s amused gaze. “Uh, hey,” he said stupidly, still patting the dog. “Um, Danny, right? I don’t think I met you properly -- uh, thanks, by the way. For, um. Looking after me? And everything.”

“Sure,” Danny said easily, and Stiles relaxed as he realized that Danny was apparently exponentially kinder than either Derek or Jackson. “Need a hand up?”

Stiles had just begun contemplating the agony awaiting him when he tried to climb to his feet, and took Danny’s proffered hand gratefully. Danny was most of a head shorter than Derek, but he was muscular and wiry, and hauled Stiles to his feet without difficulty.

“Thanks,” said Stiles, trying to mask his pain with a smile.

“No worries. You hungry?”

Stiles nodded. He liked Danny’s smile, which crinkled the man’s entire face and pressed deep dimples into his cheeks. Danny and Jackson, he realized, were both uncommonly good-looking and well-groomed. He wouldn’t be surprised if Derek selected his manservants as critically and unsentimentally as he would his horses.

The table Stiles had slept on yesterday was modestly arrayed with fresh bread, cheese, several links of greasy, still-warm sausage, and a pitcher of spiced wine. The four sets of metal dishes set out were unexpectedly practical: dented and scratched, though clean and well-made.

Stiles and Danny were just settling themselves in their chairs when Jackson came through the tent flap, followed by Derek and another knight. Danny rose at once, but it took a stealthy kick from Danny for Stiles to remember that he, too, was now expected to rise in the company of nobles. He stood, thinking bitterly that his flayed back should’ve been sufficient for him to remember his old habits.

Derek's companion was instantly recognizable even to someone who hadn’t spent most of his life around knights. Sir Vernon of Boyd was massive, tall, broad -- and very black. He hailed from northern Africa, where his father owned a tremendous expanse of land and toiled ceaselessly for the crown’s favour. Vernon had earned his knighthood for valour in the crown’s service, but most knights -- viciously racist despite Vernon’s oft-proven might -- called him the Infidel behind his back. They never said such things where Vernon could hear, however; few men took in Vernon’s powerful body and then chose to provoke him.

Stiles knew that Vernon and Derek were old friends, although the exact nature of their relationship varied wildly in popular opinion. Depictions of their friendship ranged from the mundane -- loans of money and men between their respective holdings -- to the epic, involving death-defying heroics worthy of ballads. A recurring theme in the tournament gossip about Sirs Vernon and Derek was their decade-long sexual affair, rumoured by many knights to involve the frequent seduction of young pages. But Stiles, studying the pair through his lashes, couldn’t quite imagine them intertwined in Derek’s silk sheets: both seemed too grim and too violent for tenderness. Perhaps, Stiles mused, they were as savage in bed as they were in the arena.

“So this is our peasant knight,” said Vernon, in his slow, deep drawl, as he approached the table.

“Yes,” said Derek shortly. “Danny, set a fifth place at the table.”

“You mean you’re not going to make the peasant eat off the ground?” said Jackson.

“Hmm,” said Derek, eyeing Stiles as Stiles flushed hot, then cold. “Tempting.”

Vernon stopped behind Stiles, staring at his mangled back while Stiles stubbornly faced straight ahead. He felt the heat of Vernon’s hand passing close to his flesh, but thankfully Vernon didn’t touch him.

“That back is healing nicely,” said Vernon, stepping away to take his seat opposite Stiles, beside Derek. Jackson, Danny, and Stiles sat down only after Derek nodded at them. “I’ve seen men die from floggings.”

It was disorienting, this return to being talked about rather than talked to. Stiles clenched his fists in his lap and waited for Derek and Vernon to fill their plates before reaching for food. He was surprised that the knights were eating at the same time as their servants, and at the same table. Sir Alan had done the same, typically, but Alan was kinder and less self-important than Derek or Vernon.

“You know,” said Vernon to Derek, as they began eating, “you didn’t have to buy a training partner. I would’ve ridden out to Hale and trained with you, if you wanted someone so badly.”

Stiles glanced at Derek, startled. He hadn’t considered that Derek had purchased his bond so that they could improve his joust -- but having a world-class, completely powerless training partner held a lot of appeal.

Derek was scowling down at his own plate. “I have no interest in using him to train.”

“Surely you’re not going to let all that” -- Vernon waved vaguely at Stiles’s stiff form -- “go to waste?”

Stiles hid a smile. He had tilted against Vernon only once; Vernon struck like a battering ram, but his aim was careless. Stiles had won.

“Not to waste, no. He’ll be put to work like everyone else at Hale. In the orchards, perhaps.”

“But, Derek -- he’s clearly good with weapons. Hale always needs more soldiers, and you’re going to turn him out to pasture like a cripple?”

Vernon seemed genuinely bewildered, and Stiles thought he understood why. Vernon was from a remote and sprawling holding, the defense of which required the full use of every able-bodied adult. To Vernon, dismissing anyone -- especially a strong young man with an excess of proven skill -- was blasphemous.

“I have enough soldiers already, Sir Vernon, without needing to conscript cocksure peasants with an overabundance of luck and an underabundance of proper respect for their betters.”

Stiles choked on a bite of sausage. Jackson leaned around Danny to thump him on the back, and Stiles bit back a scream as the world exploded into scorching agony. He bent over his plate, eyes squeezed shut, gasping.

“Oops,” said Jackson. “Forgot about your back. Sorry. Thought you were choking.” He gazed sadly at his hand and added, “You got your blood on me.”

“Jackson,” said Derek.

“What? I apologized!”

Derek sighed and returned to his food.

Stiles inhaled shakily. So, he thought. This is how it would go.

“Are you okay, Stiles?” Danny asked.

“I’m perfect, thank you for asking,” said Stiles, baring his teeth in a semblance of a smile.

Vernon chuckled. “Tell me, Sir Stiles -- defiler of virgins, caster of curses, master of bribery -- how did you ever sit astride a horse with those giant balls of yours?”

Stiles looked down at his plate, seething but silent.

“Oi,” said Vernon, and Stiles was alarmed enough by the menace in that syllable to glance up at Vernon’s abruptly unsmiling face. “You’ll answer me when I speak to you.”

Derek, in the periphery of Stiles’s vision, rolled his eyes.

“My apologies, Sir Vernon. I’ve never defiled a virgin. That I know of.”

“Surely,” said Vernon, grinning, “you don’t mean that you never wormed your way under Lydia’s skirts during all those months on the road together? Or are you implying that she was already soiled when you --”

Stiles stood.

Vernon smirked up at him.

“Stiles,” Derek said into the thundering silence, “sit down.”

Danny touched one of his trembling fists, but Stiles eyes didn’t waver from Vernon’s. “Lydia is a lady,” he spat, dimly registering that his voice was shaking as badly as his hands. “She knows more about honour and chivalry than you --”

“Stiles!” Derek said.

“ _She knows more about honour and chivalry than you_ , Vernon of Boyd! How much did your barbarian daddy pay for your knighthood? Did anyone even bother to read the Code to you before they elevated you above _your_ birth? Did --”

For a man of such colossal proportions, Vernon moved with astounding speed. In one instant, Stiles was watching his face darken and reveling in his own costly triumph; in the next, Vernon had knocked over his stool and was halfway around the table. Stiles ducked the first blow, then took a fist deep in his solar plexus. When he doubled over, choked and panicking, Vernon brought his knee up into Stiles’s face.

Stiles collapsed, clutching his nose. His vision was wobbly, faint and dark, but he could see well enough to register Derek locking his arms around Vernon’s barrel chest and hauling Vernon away. “Get him out of here!” Derek snapped. Stiles could barely hear him through the sick roaring in his ears.

Stiles let Danny pull him to his feet and half-drag him out of the tent. They exited through the small back flap into a large canopy, which sheltered two bedrolls -- Danny’s and Jackson’s, presumably -- miscellaneous camp provisions, and four horses.

“Are you okay?” Danny asked him, hand lingering on Stiles’s shoulder.

Stiles’s vision was clearing, although the throbbing, searing pain in his nose remained. He ignored Danny and turned instead toward the horses. One was tied apart from the others -- Derek’s emblematic black stallion, an absolute monster of a beast that (so the story went) had once thwarted a band of horse thieves by trampling three men to death. A second horse, also large, likely served as Derek’s backup mount in case of injury to the black stallion. The third steed was smaller: Jackson or Danny would ride him on the road and use him to carry messages.

The fourth horse was Hela, and the sight of her loosened something tight and painful in Stiles’s chest. He went to her at once. She was tied closest to the tent, facing away from him, and she must’ve smelled his blood before she caught his actual scent. She swung her head away as he stepped beside her neck, then rolled her eye back towards him, stomped once, and butted her entire head into his torso.

Stiles busied himself with rubbing under her forelock and tickling the underside of her jaw, trying not to cry for the second time in twelve hours.

Behind him, Jackson and Danny were having a whispered argument, the gist of which was that Jackson hoped Derek beat Stiles’s face in and Danny hoped Jackson developed some compassion.

Stiles told himself that he only cried from shock and exhaustion, but it all felt so much more wretched and irredeemable. He was weak. He was stupid. Any moment now, either Vernon or Derek -- or both -- were going to come for him and take him to pieces.

Gradually, Stiles became aware of a second conversation. Derek and Vernon, he realized, were only a few feet away, and their voices carried easily through the cloth walls.

“ -- while since I’ve seen you lose your temper like that,” Derek was saying.

A short silence ended in a sigh. “I know. I swear, Derek, that I’m not trying to condemn you for saving him...it’s just that I can’t look at him without remembering Sir Alan. The last thing Alan deserved was to be murdered by his own men at some backwards no-name tournament.”

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut. Was that was they thought of him? Was that what everyone thought of him?

Derek the savior, Stiles the murderer. If it stung any less he’d almost find it amusing.

“Actually,” said Derek, “I don’t think he killed Alan.”

“What? But you were the one --”

“I know. But I talked to the Argents last night. I don’t -- I never really believed he did it. Or. I don’t know. Maybe I did, or pretended I did. It would’ve been easier, I suppose. If he’d killed Alan.”

Another brief silence, then: “What if he had killed Alan? Would you still have done it?”

“Done what?”

“All of it,” said Vernon. “Arranged the whole thing. Borrowed two hundred gold pieces from me against winnings you don’t yet have.”

“I think,” said Derek slowly, “if I thought he was capable of killing Deaton, I wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.”

How funny, thought Stiles, that Derek was perfectly content with terrorizing him only if he were innocent. Why not just let him go the gallows, if it would’ve saved Derek so much trouble? And who was Derek to speculate on whether Stiles could murder a man?

Stiles kissed Hela’s velvet nose. As far as he was concerned, both Vernon and Derek could go to hell. At least Stiles got to stay close to Hela -- unless, of course, Derek had procured her solely to make Stiles watch while Derek fed her to his hounds.

“You’re not going to make me apologize, are you?” Vernon said.

Derek chuckled. “No. You might consider trying a little less hard to provoke him, though. I think you broke his nose again.”

“Deal,” said Vernon. “Meanwhile, you might try being a little kinder.”

Derek sighed. “No. I can’t. I’ll have to be hard on him, no matter what. I can’t let him get the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea? Derek, you’re my best friend in the world, but you’re also a proper idiot.”

Stiles could guess what they were alluding to. Derek had obviously paid an extraordinary sum for Stiles -- perhaps even as much as the two hundred gold coins Vernon had referenced. Vernon had assumed Derek would use Stiles as a training partner, and doubtlessly others were thinking along similar lines. But Derek lived under the shadow of endless tawdry rumours about his sexual proclivities and obscene exploits. And many of those rumours involved athletic teenaged boys not unlike Stiles himself.

Stiles wouldn’t touch Derek with a burning stick, but Derek seemed to think he had to be nasty to Stiles in order to forestall a sexual relationship.

“Someone sure thinks a lot of himself,” Stiles muttered to Hela. He wondered if Derek would ease up on him if Stiles explained that he’d sooner fuck a rotting carcass. Somehow he doubted that that conversation would end with Stiles still in one piece.

Derek never responded to Vernon. After several minutes of silence, Vernon said, “Well, we should probably make sure he hasn’t run off.”

For a moment, Stiles scowled at Hela -- until he realized that they’d know he’d heard their entire conversation if they spotted him so close to the tent. He ducked under Hela’s head, then under the heads of the next two horses. The black stallion was furthest from the tent, and Stiles halted beside him.

Somehow Stiles wasn’t surprised that the stallion was half-wild. The horse jerked hard against his rope, stomping, trying to rear away from him. “No, no, stop that,” Stiles whispered, trying to keep his voice low and soothing as he edged out of range of the beast’s forelegs. He cupped both palms together, lifting them to the stallion’s muzzle. “You dumb stupid brute, you like me, don’t you know that. I’m Stiles. You love me, I am beloved of all horses. Yes, shhh, even you -- no -- mmm, yes, there now, good boy….” Stiles murmured nonsense until the black ears swivelled towards him and the stallion’s muzzle dropped into his palm.

Stiles and the horse both startled at the sound of laughter. Stiles looked up, along the stallion’s body, at Vernon and Derek: the former chortling through a hand clapped over his mouth, the latter scowling balefully.

“Let me guess,” Stiles drawled, stepping back from the stallion and lifting his hands into the air. “You don’t like people touching your horse?”

The horse stretched out his elegant neck so he could nuzzle Stiles’s palm. Stiles bit his lip, trying not to smile.

“Oh my God,” said Vernon, still shaking with mirth. “Derek, oh my God, this is perfect. You know, I think this exact scene plays out in one of my sister’s storybooks --”

“Vernon,” said Derek, “kindly shut up.” He eyed his horse warily. “Greenberg doesn’t like most people.”

“Oh,” said Stiles, and then, because it seemed like they truly had agreed not to drag him off for a beating: “They say a horse takes after his master. He probably just likes the scent of my blood.”

Derek stared at him; Vernon roared with laughter. Self-conscious, Stiles touched his nose, which was too tender to pinch and thus still bleeding sluggishly. There was blood all over his chin and on the back of the hand he’d tried to wipe himself with, and drops of blood on his chest and stomach; he must look frightful.

Finally: “Funny,” said Derek, apparently incapable of producing an actual laugh. “So what’s she like, then?” He tipped his head to indicate Hela.

Stiles was silent, as taken aback by his own memories as he was by Derek’s unexpected break from maliciousness. It was Sir Alan, an accomplished horseman, who used to say that horses’ personalities were moulded by their owners. Alan had acquired Hela when she was still a foal, long-legged and ungainly, and Stiles and Scott had been instantly smitten with her huge doe eyes and comical clumsiness. Hela used to follow them around like a puppy, lipping at their pockets for treats, ceaselessly curious and devoted. Alan had pretended to be mad, claiming that she’d never know who her real master was, that they’d ruin her for the joust. Hela, of course, had matured into a peerless jousting mount, but Alan always said that she was more Stiles and Scott’s horse than his.

“I’m not her master,” said Stiles, too quickly and too late. He fixed his gaze on the black stallion -- Greenberg -- and refused to look at Derek. “She belonged to Sir Alan.”

“I know,” said Derek.

Vernon, who had finally stopped laughing, said, “Derek’s family sold her to Sir Alan after her mother died. She wasn’t even weaned yet. Or don’t you remember?”

“No,” said Stiles slowly, staring at Greenberg’s forehead. The stallion’s forelock hid a small white star -- the singular interruption in his sleek black coat. It was very white -- the horse was obviously groomed often and well -- and slightly off-center.

“Perhaps it was before you entered Sir Alan’s service.”

“No,” he said again, distracted, “I recall weaning her.” He definitely remembered feeding Hela goat’s milk out of the sliced-off tip of a hollowed-out horn. Stiles and Scott, aged eleven or twelve, had waged many bitter battles over whose turn it was to feed her. He’d forgotten how remarkable that was -- hand-raising a prematurely weaned horse, avoiding both malnutrition and sickness. He tried to remember where and when Alan had bought Hela. He couldn’t.

Stiles glanced at Derek, who was watching him steadily, expression cool as ever. It dawned on Stiles that they may have met before, when Stiles was properly a peasant and Alan was still alive. But such a meeting was unlikely; Alan hadn’t been in the habit of letting his rambunctious peasant boys tag along to meetings with nobles. The Hales hosted an annual tournament, so Stiles had almost certainly visited their estate -- but he’d also visited nearly every other estate in Europe. If he’d ever known that Alan had bought Hela from the Hales, he’d forgotten years ago.

“Never mind,” said Derek brusquely. “We only remember Hela because Sir Alan used to write us about her progress.”

“She’s also the spitting image of her dam,” said Vernon.

Derek grunted.

Stiles glanced between them, unsure of how to act in the face of such uncharacteristic civility. Normally he would begin babbling, but he didn’t think his nose could withstand any more encounters with hostile fists. He concentrated on keeping his mouth shut and stroking Greenberg’s neck.

Derek broke a long silence by asking where Jackson and Danny had gone. Stiles, who hadn’t noticed their departure, shrugged.

Derek sighed and said, “Look. I know that you’ve had a...rough couple of days, and I’ve been lenient” -- Stiles struggled to turn a snort into a cough -- “but I can only look the other way so many times.”

Stiles waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, he glanced at Vernon and said, “Uh. Sorry I yelled at you. About Lydia, and, um, your father. I mean, I’ve never met him, but I’m sure he’s not a barbarian.”

Vernon rubbed a hand across his mouth and shrugged. He did not, Stiles noted, apologize for rebreaking Stiles’s nose.

“Good,” said Derek. “See that we don’t have a repeat of this morning.”

“Yes, Sir Derek.”

Stiles scowled at their backs until they disappeared around the corner of the tent.

\--

That afternoon, Danny tried to convince Stiles to attend Derek’s World Championships match. It wasn’t a much-anticipated joust -- Derek was seeded against an unblooded knight -- and Stiles excused his dread of the arena by claiming that he’d rather wait to watch a more exciting joust. Not until he glimpsed Danny’s glowering side-eye did he realize that Danny couldn’t spectate without Stiles in tow. He’d assumed that Derek didn’t think he’d run; now he knew that Derek had ordered his men to watch him.

They passed the afternoon in silence. Danny mended a worn bridle strap while Stiles groomed the horses and cleaned the flagstones of their waste. The work was familiar; even while masquerading as a knight, Stiles had continued to share chore duties with Scott and Isaac, except when being spotted at menial labour was likely to arouse suspicions. The rhythms of currying and combing and shovelling calmed his mind. He thought of the horses beneath his hands and little else.

Jackson returned in the early evening, leading Greenberg but unaccompanied by Derek. The stallion, Stiles saw, was not a particular fan of Jackson, and the afternoon joust had done nothing to tamp down his overabundant energy; Jackson was using the entire length of his body to lean against Greenberg and keep the horse walking straight. Greenberg needed either a good gallop or an even more demanding tournament schedule, but Stiles was not in any position to provide other.

Stiles took Greenberg’s reins from Jackson and spent the next two hours fawning over the stallion, removing his tack quickly and then lingering over the basic tasks of wiping him down and combing the plaits from his mane and tail. Greenberg’s stablemates ignored them, but Hela was jealous, so Stiles visited her again before finally slipping into the tent. The sun had set, and Jackson and Danny were drinking ale at the table, polishing Derek’s armour by lamplight. Derek was still absent.

“Is there any food?” Stiles asked as he approached them.

Jackson ignored him, but Danny nodded toward a small cloth-wrapped parcel: they’d set aside dinner for him. Stiles settled himself on the bench beside Danny, bit off a mouthful of jerky, and picked up Derek’s left cuisse. They watched as he selected a rag, dipped it in tallow and then the pot of fine sand, and set about polishing the plated metal. After a moment they returned to their own segments of armour.

This, too, was familiar to Stiles, who’d passed many evenings at the same work, albeit with very different companions. He wished the armour was as diverting as horses, but polishing was a dull, listless task, and he couldn’t avoid thinking of Scott and Isaac -- foolish chatter and biting sarcasm, brilliant grins and sly smiles. His throat felt tight. He was glad that Danny and Jackson spoke infrequently, and only to each other.

Derek still hadn’t turned when Stiles finally fell asleep, after nudging aside a hound to lay atop the dog’s warmed spot on the stones. Stiles was glad of his absence.

\--

Derek was scheduled to face Vernon the next morning, and Danny refused to miss the match.

“No one’s going to recognize you,” Danny groused, when Stiles claimed that he wasn’t feeling well.

Stiles would’ve protested further, but as Danny seemed to be the only member of his new household who didn’t want to snap Stiles in half, he didn’t think he was in any position to ruin a tentative alliance. He took the clean shirt that Danny offered him, although pulling it on was hardly easier than it had been two days earlier. As they exited the tent, Danny handed over a wide-brimmed hat, the kind field hands wore during the summer. Stiles accepted it wordlessly and tugged it down low, hating his own desire to hide his face.

It was a fine day for a joust. The sky was dim, dull and overcast, but the clouds were high and thin; rain was unlikely. No bright sunlight to transform polished armour into dazzling blind spots. No sopping, sloppy ruts along the rail from horses churning through mud. The spectators were in high spirits, smashed against each other, noisy, drunk, happy. Stiles took it all in from where he slouched at one end of the field, lurking in a corner of the competitor’s tent temporarily occupied by Derek and his attendants.

If Derek was surprised that Stiles had come to watch him joust -- his seventeenth match in four days; the World Championships were grueling -- he didn’t show it. Actually, Derek didn’t show much of any emotion at all, and didn’t even acknowledge Stiles or Danny when they arrived.

Stiles had never had any particular pre-tilt rituals, had never bothered with things like focus exercises or visualization, but Derek appeared to be one of those knights who took mental preparation seriously. Very seriously. Derek was always taciturn, but in the twenty minutes before the match he quieted still further, turning surly and taciturn. He checked every buckle and joint in his armour, every strap and segment of Greenberg’s tack, and contorted his way through a series of limbering stretches.

Stiles would’ve rolled his eyes, or laughed, if watching Derek didn’t hurt so much. His arrest, followed by the night in jail, the morning flogging, and his hours in the stocks, had erased Stiles’s tournament schedule from his mind; he’d forgotten that he had been slotted to face off against Derek this afternoon. Rather than cope with a forty-minute gap during peak attendance, the tournament officials had rearranged several matches to give spectators a new must-see tilt.

And it was a must-see tilt, even though only novice tournament fans believed that Vernon had a serious shot at winning. Derek, despite his eight-month absence from the tournament circuit, was so heavily favoured to win the World Championships that most bookies weren’t even accepting bets on his victory. Still, Sir Vernon was an excellent jouster at peak fitness, and he was likelier to make Derek sweat than all but a few other knights.

Three minutes before the flag would drop, Derek was standing at Greenberg’s head, speaking quietly to his stallion. Some knights treated their horses like tools -- like swords or helmets that should be cared for but never catered to -- but most, like Derek, respected how dependent they were on their mounts. Misunderstandings between horses and riders could easily result in tournament defeats or, worse, death on the battlefield. Horses could be amazingly dumb, Stiles knew, but they were also sensitive and responsive. Derek was ensuring Greenberg’s mental preparedness just as he had his own.

Two minutes before the flag dropped. Jackson brought Derek his helmet, and Derek donned it, leaving the visor up. Danny held Derek’s stirrup while he mounted. Jackson handed Derek his lance. A hundred yards away on the opposite end of the arena, Sir Vernon mounted a behemoth bay gelding that was at least part plough horse.

The crowd was quieting, hushed by their own anticipation. Stiles glanced at the nobles’ box, where a score of titled men and women sat directly across from the midpoint of the arena. Lydia, who loved tournaments, was absent. Stiles had already scanned the stands for Scott, Kira, and Isaac, but hadn’t spotted any of them. He hoped they were long gone from London.

One minute until the flag dropped, and Derek urged Greenberg into a trot, forcing the stallion to turn in tight circles. The stallion was edgy, mincing his steps and dancing, but Stiles knew he was only high-strung, not nervous.

A page trotted out into the center of the field, holding his white flag aloft. Derek halted Greenberg at the end of the railing and then snapped his visor down over his eyes. Vernon and Derek hefted their lances in simultaneous salutes.

The flag came down, the page ran off the field, and the two horses leapt towards each other.

Derek, Stiles recognized -- grudgingly, but not for the first time -- was a flawless jouster. Most knights sacrificed certain strengths in order to foster others, developing control, for instance, at the loss of brute strength. Every aspect of Derek’s technique was faultless. Steady but adaptable aim; fearlessness without recklessness; speed and power perfectly counterbalanced by impeccable focus. He was patient, precise, and bold.

Vernon didn’t stand a chance.

Derek’s lance shattered against Vernon’s helmet, and Vernon was hurled backwards to hang halfway out of his saddle. Derek, who had a reputation for adjusting his speed at the last instant to throw off his opponent’s aim -- many lances never touched him -- was struck between the lower ribs, too low to be unseated.

The crowd howled. Derek ignored the spectators, some of whom brandished flags bearing his own coat of arms, but they were still cheering when he finally slowed Greenberg to a trot and turned to ride back down the field. Vernon had righted himself and removed his helmet, but he was clearly disoriented, shaking his head and squinting. Derek lifted his visor as he drew close. The pair spoke briefly, clasped forearms, then parted, riding back to their respective groups of attendants.

Stiles watched the crowds and the knights and the horses, and wondered if this bitter taste in his mouth, this sensation of incapacitating despair, would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He’d known it would hurt, but he hadn’t expected this pain, so piercing and grievous. Howling crowds, heralds and trumpets, fidgeting horses, armoured knights glowing in the sun -- Stiles hadn’t imagined he’d feel such heartache and heartbreak. The scene was utterly familiar to him, and he would never again be an actor on this stage. Stiles stood on the edge of a tournament arena and tried to accept that he no longer belonged here.

\--

Afterwards, Stiles would remember the remainder of the World Championships only in a series of jagged, disjointed snippets, too jumbled for him to recall their proper order.

Derek, to the surprise of only a stupid few, won. The image of the unsmiling new World Champion hefting aloft his reward -- a massive gold statue of a mounted knight, glittering with silver, bronze, and gemstones -- would burn forever in Stiles’s mind as the single vivid memory of those painful early days of his new servitude.

The rest passed in a haze -- Derek gravely accepting the ceremonial scepter; Derek bowing to the royal family, kissing the queen’s hand; Danny laughing at Stiles’s side; faces and shouts and colours in the crowd. Stiles was detached from it all, floating above and beyond it. He helped Danny pack the tent while Jackson and Derek attended the feast in Derek’s honour, loaded the cart in a daze, laid down beside the hounds in the empty tent, numb, silent.

He awoke late, cold and disoriented. The dogs that warmed him during the night were gone. The noise that had finally roused him was the thumping of wooden poles against stone: Derek’s tent was being dismantled around him.

“Derek told us to let you sleep,” said Danny, when he spotted Stiles sitting up and blinking at the confusion around him. “He wants us to be in Hampshire by nightfall, and didn’t want you collapsing on the road.”

Hampshire was eight leagues away, and it was already midmorning. Stiles suppressed a sigh and stood, biting back a groan as his many aches announced themselves, then set about helping Danny pack.

Stiles didn’t fully rouse himself from his fog until Jackson appeared as they were exiting London’s western gates. Crowds had dogged the new World Champion through the narrow streets nearest the Knights’ Quarter, but Derek’s wooden disregard had eventually discouraged the throngs of fans. This was fortunate, because Jackson was leading Hela, who had -- temporarily, Stiles hoped -- assumed the role of packhorse. She was laden with four large sacks of jingling gold coin: the liquified value of the World Championships trophy.

No one in the streets had given any indication of recognizing the dusty peasant perched in the back of the cart.

“Sir Christopher asked if you’d like an armed escort to ensure that the gold doesn’t fall prey to bandits and thieves,” Jackson said to Derek, without preamble, as he fell in beside their party.

“No,” said Derek.

“I said you didn’t want one.”

“Good. And who’s this?”

The cloaked figure Stiles had taken for a passing traveler was still riding alongside Hela. Stiles, who’d observed Jackson’s arrival listlessly, blinked and sat up straighter as the stranger drew back her hood, revealing a thin, feminine face he hadn’t seen in years.

“Morrell,” said Derek, and bowed from his saddle. “I didn’t know you were in London.”

“I wasn’t; I just arrived this morning,” she said. Her voice was exactly as Stiles remembered it: cool and calm, like her brother Alan’s, and slightly sanctimonious. The last time Stiles had met her, he was twelve years old and on the verge of collapse after traveling hard for three days and nights to reach her and her famed healing skills. “I’m sure you can guess why I came.”

As one, Derek and Morrell’s gazes flicked toward Stiles, who had already guessed the reason for Morrell of Deaton's abrupt appearance.

“I didn’t kill Sir Alan,” Stiles said loudly, startling a portly man in monk’s robes leading a laden donkey past them toward London. Jackson, who was busy nimbly transferring the sacks of gold from Hela to the moving cart, snorted audibly.

“I haven’t laid any accusations,” Morrell said smoothly -- to Derek, not Stiles. “Actually, I’ve spent the better part of the morning listening to members of the peerage explicitly claim that you did not kill Alan. But you’ll forgive me if I’m less inclined to allow my brother’s death to remain unpunished.”

“He died in an accident,” said Stiles. He hesitated, then added, “You know he shouldn’t have been competing at his age.” At fifty-two, Sir Alan had been a wily competitor, but not a spry one.

“And what happened to his body after this -- accident?”

Morrell’s dark eyes were now fixed on Stiles, and he found that he couldn’t quite meet them. “We buried him outside of Segovia,” he said, falteringly. How would he want Scott, or Isaac, to be buried? “We didn’t -- we knew he wasn’t a particular follower of the Church, but we said the Lord’s Prayer, and sent him to other side with all our best wishes.”

Stiles stared past Morrell’s horse at walled London, grey and hulking beneath the unusually brilliant British sun, and ringed with people spilling forth from its every gate. The roads were crowded with travelers returning home after the World Championships, but most were headed north or east, not west along the Thames. It was high autumn; the harvest was close at hand, and this was surely one of the last fine days of the year. They’d buried Alan in spring, in dark earth still soggy from the late thaw.

“I remember you,” said Morrell. “Stiles. That’s your name. I remember you as a kind boy, skittish and high-strung as a colt, but compassionate, gentle and tender with my patients. Do you recall?”

“I,” said Stiles. He coughed, cleared his throat, and glanced, inexplicably, at Derek. Derek had shaved before his banquet last night, but there was already a shadow of a beard along his tight jaw. He was staring straight ahead, his gaze fixed unwaveringly between Greenberg’s ears. “Yes,” Stiles said, “I recall. Sir Alan and I stayed with you for two weeks several years ago, and he offered my services in your clinic.”

“I would not have believed that boy capable of killing a fly,” said Morrell. “But boys grow into men, and men do terrible things for gold and glory.”

She wasn’t looking at Stiles as she said the last. Her thin face was turned instead toward Derek, and her dark eyes were bright and cold. Derek did not acknowledge her steady regard.

 

* * *

 

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